How to Get Your Resume Past the System and Into Human Hands

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Getting a call for an interview with a big multi-national company in the Gulf can seem like a challenge when you don’t have personal contacts. Professionals often end up blaming the sheer volume of CVs that the human resources need to sift through. And it is a fact that the HR just can’t review all resumes in detail. Recruiters devote only a few seconds to every resume and trash the ones that don’t appeal to them. So what is it that they want? How can a resume hold their attention for long enough for them to gauge that you have the skills and experience for the job in question? Many major organizations make use of advanced applicant tracking systems (ATS) to pre-filter CVs. The following article discusses about how to get your resume past the ATS and into the right hands.

Gulf countries like UAE receive numerous job applications every day and it can be herculean task to land your dream job. To pursue gulf jobs the applicants must possess the perfect Curriculum Vita. This CV is meant to not only engage the recruiter but also get past the ATS. Let us take a look at this concept of ATS.

About the Applicant Tracking System

The Applicant Tracking System or ATS works by scanning CVs for contextual phrases and keywords, mathematically assessing them by giving scores based on relevance and sending across the most qualified CVs for human review. This helps save time and the inconvenience of sorting through irrelevant resumes. Even though this system guarantees bringing out relevant contenders, chances are your application may slip through the cracks if your CV does not have the right keywords that the company is using to search for candidates.

The following are a few tips for creating a CV that an ATS will approve of and the human resources will commend.

1. Keep Formatting Simple

It is important to keep an official document simple and sophisticated. Not only do hiring managers like to focus on your accomplishments rather than the color and design of the document, even the ATS demands simplicity and cold conformity. Remove all images, logos, shading and symbols. Also, stick to regular font styles like Times New Roman, or Arial as the ATS doesn’t recognize fancy fonts and can reject your CV out of confusion.

Just include usual sections like Qualifications, Education, Skills and Professional Experience. Unfamiliar tags like Affiliations and Publications may obscure the chances of your CV getting through. Finally, send the CV as a Word document rather than a PDF.

2. Target the Right Keywords

Certain terms can define a profession. There are always lingoes, software, responsibilities, licenses, certificates and basic skills that can support your candidature. The ATS searches for contextual information and specific key phrases related to the field. Make sure you include the words mentioned in the given job description.

Services like TagCrowd and Wordle allow you to create a word cloud from job descriptions. This keyword cloud highlights the frequently used words so that you can use them all over your resume. However, do not go overboard by stuffing the keywords. Only include skills-related keywords a maximum of three times in the entire document. Also use the acronym along with the spelled-out forms of titles, certifications and entities.

3. Avoid the Career Objective

The section ‘Career objectives’ can be given a miss. Replace this with a summary of your qualifications. This should be a six-sentence section with information presented in bullets. Make sure you fill this with ATS-friendly keywords and utilize the sentences to convey your major skills, important experiences and best achievements.

You will appease the ATS plus you will give the hiring manager the significant details right at the top where they can quickly scan and find out the value you will add to the organization.

4. Do not Make Spelling Mistakes

Making spelling mistakes can kill your chances of getting that interview call. Human beings can at least comprehend what you mean but the ATS will straight away terminate your application as it would not understand what you are talking about. So it is wiser to be careful and triple check your CV before sending it across..